Boy Scouts get MPAA-approved copyright merit badge

The Motion Picture Association of America has partnered with the Los Angeles …

More than 50,000 kids in the Los Angeles area are enrolled in the Boy Scouts, where they earn merit badges in things like First Aid, Personal Management, and Citizenship in the World, and generally learn to "Be Prepared" (the Boy Scout motto). But what Boy Scout worth his moccasins could legitimately "be prepared" without knowing how to respect copyrights?

That's why the MPAA partnered with the Los Angeles Area Boy Scouts to develop the "Respect Copyrights" patch, a merit badge that Scouts can earn after reading some propaganda information on what you are not supposed to do with copyrighted works. After that, it's time to make a presentation. How about something on peer-to-peer file-sharing?

"Research peer to peer websites—describe to your troop what they are and how they are sometimes used to illegally trade copyrighted materials," suggests the official curriculum. Of course, if you actually have to explain to your troop what p2p networks are and how they are used, you're probably in Amish country. "There are peer to peer groups who offer legal downloads and those who offer illegal downloads. Make a list of both. Suggest ways to detect peer to peer software like the MPAA Parent File Scan."

That's right—kids are supposed to encourage other kids to go home and run Parent File Scan on their machines. This is a piece of software that simply lists all file-swapping applications and media files (whether legal or illegal) on a user's hard drive. Encouraging kids to do this (with the obvious correlation that they could discover and put an end to big brother John Q. Crazyreefer's stash of hidden downloads) seems a mite creepy, but what's truly disconcerting about the program is that it's not designed to teach kids about copyright at all. It's designed to teach them to "respect copyrights."

That little difference is important, because the curriculum appears to offer no guidance regarding fair use, public domain material, the limited duration of such rights, and why you aren't allowed to make backup copies of DVDs that you purchased. Instead, students are asked to "go to a movie and stay through all of the credits. Tell your counselor and/or troop leader who you think, in addition to the main actors and actresses, would be hurt if that film were stolen?"

That's a good lesson to learn, but it's only one of many copyright lessons. For a major corporate interest to get its message out to kids this way (and the MPAA isn't the only culprit), and to produce such a one-sided curriculum, is just inappropriate. It suggests a visceral unwillingness to truly engage with people about copyright issues; much easier instead simply to get them while they're young and drill the "respect copyrights" message into their impressionable heads.

Update: it's a "patch"

Several former Boy Scouts have responded to point out that this is not actually a merit badge; the MPAA materials simply refer to it as a "patch."